Alan Rinzler, on Publishing Past, Present and Future: Part 1

When you are reading the acknowledgments page of a newly purchased book, and you come across effusive thanks from the writer to his/her editor, you can reasonably ask, "Just what does an editor do?" Is such a person merely a handy helpmate who corrects grammatical errors? Is the editor the person who keeps the writer's creative rampages in check, so that eventually an actual book with a beginning, a middle and an end will arrive at the book store (or, in these times, on your iPad)? Is the editor a soul mate to the writer, without whom the poor sot may never finish the inspired, but sanity-threatening project on which he/she has embarked?

All of these will do, and many others. If you are a writer yourself, you know the intellectual and emotional intimacy that can result between you and your editor. It can be a sanguine conversation or a grittily difficult one, and every shade of talk in between. A very good primer on what the relationship can be like is A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. Among others, Perkins was the editor for much of the work of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe.

There are few editors today who can claim to have edited such a list of major writers (either in terms of the quality or sales of their books). But one who can is Alan Rinzler. Having edited several of the books by Hunter S. Thompson, Clive Cussler, Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins and many, many others (including -- full disclosure -- two of mine) Rinzler occupies an almost unique place in contemporary publishing.

And he has much to say about the current state of that publishing.

For one, things look very good indeed, for a very real reason. "I don't think people will ever stop writing or reading," Rinzler says. "Human beings are hardwired to tell stories, compelled to write them...and to read stories for pleasure, information, inspiration -- all the vital knowledge that we need to survive." Every editor knows that the essential quality needed for a successful book is that it be written well. It's the writer's most important task, and always has been. What is new in successful books these days is the way they get published and sold, and Rinzler is very upbeat about current and future prospects in that realm, too.

"I was lucky to start out in publishing in the early 1960s when youth culture was a very important factor in book acquisition, production and marketing. Since I was young myself, I was able to make a connection with what was happening and that actually sold books."

Rinzler's rise was meteoric, starting with a mentorship from the legendary Robert Gottlieb at Simon and Schuster.

"After S&S, I went to Macmillan, and then Holt, which was owned by CBS at the time. So right away I had the kinds of resources that allowed me to sign up and develop books for the so-called youth market. A book about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in their folk-music phase. A book on civil rights called The Movement, because I had been a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. And most importantly the first book written by a street kid growing up in Harlem, Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land, which turned out to be a big NY Times best-seller."

This youthful rise also included Rinzler's editing and publishing Custer Died for Your Sins by Lakota Sioux Native American Vine Deloria Jr, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of The American West by Dee Brown. Published in 1970, it remains the best-selling book that Rinzler has ever worked on, and has been translated into more than 20 languages. It is still in print.

"Meanwhile, I had always loved rock 'n roll as well. I had done a book on Woodstock by the rock 'n roll photographer Baron Wolman, who told his friend Jann Wenner about me. Jann was in the process of founding a little newsprint four-fold publication in San Francisco named Rolling Stone, and we met."

Agreeing to come on board, Rinzler moved his family from New York City to the west coast, and Rolling Stone became world famous. "Jann and I both wanted to start a book division, which we did, and I was in charge." The publishing arm was called Straight Arrow Books. "Ultimately we published about 50 titles, most of which are still in print." Among the most iconic titles published by Straight Arrow that are still in print are Hunter S. Thompson's legendary Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Kerouac, the first biography of Jack Kerouac by Ann Charters, Strike by Jeremy Brecher, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo by Oscar Acosta, and many others.

When Wenner decided to move Rolling Stone's operations to New York City, Rinzler demurred, having decided that the San Francisco Bay Area was where he and his young family wanted to stay. He went to work for Barney Rosset at Grove Press and Evergreen Review. "Rosset was another great American publisher," Rinzler says. "who paved the way for a lot of things that were actually, in those days, against the law to publish, like Lady Chatterly's Lover and Tropic of Cancer."

Rinzler has continued on from there, to edit books for innumerable writers. He was for some years the west coast editor for Bantam Books, for whom he edited work by Tom Robbins, Jerzy Kosinski and Shirley MacLaine, among others, and until recently, Rinzler was an Executive Editor for Jossey Bass, the west coast imprint of John Wiley & Sons in San Francisco.

In the second part of this article, we will see how Alan Rinzler's life as a premier editor has continued into the current age, in which the very manner of publishing itself is changing precipitously and profoundly. Alan Rinzler is still a principal player, and very much involved.

Terence Clarke's new novel The Notorious Dream of Jesús Lázaro will be published later this year.